Category: Animal Protection

Monkey business: A Javan langur (Trachypithecus auratus) peers out of a cardboard box after it arrived at the Jember Police office, East Java, on Thursday. Also known as the Javan lutung, the primate was among various rare animals confiscated by the local Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA) and environmental group ProFauna, from a trader who allegedly sells exotic animals online. (Antara/Seno)

Eight men pose with four dead Javan monkeys they allegedly shot in a photo uploaded on Facebook by Ozzy Syahputra Muhammad Akbar, who was reported to the police on Thursday for allegedly killing protected animals. (Photo from ProFauna Indonesia)

Bandung/Malang, East Java. Conservationist group ProFauna Indonesia on Thursday reported an alleged hunter of protected wildlife to the police after he uploaded several photos on Facebook showing him and a group of people posing with several dead animals.

The report was made against Ozzy Syahputra Muhammad Akbar, who last year posted several photos onto social media displaying slain Javan monkeys and leopard cats.

The Facebook account in question was either deleted or deactivated on Wednesday after a deluge of condemnation came its way, ProFauna chairman Rosek Nursahid said on Thursday.

“The photos had been posted for a while [since January 2013], but [they] drew even more attention this year,” Rosek said at ProFauna’s headquarters in the East Java city of Malang. “There were a lot of photos of [Ozzy] posing with animals he had hunted.”

ProFauna, however, saved copies of the photos before the account was removed. The group submitted them as evidence to the West Java Police along with their report against Ozzy, who is a resident of Bogor, West Java.

One of the photos saved by ProFauna showed a dead Javan monkey (or lutung), a “vulnerable” species according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). There was blood on the monkey’s forehead, and its hand was made to hold a bottle of mineral water.

There were two comments posted under the photo: one said “heavily drunk,” while the other said, “How could it get drunk with mineral water? hahahaaaa.”

Another photo displayed eight men — five of them holding airsoft rifles — posing with four dead monkeys in front of them.

Rosek added that Ozzy was a member of an airsoft gun community. The group’s Facebook account was also recently shut down.

ProFauna accused Ozzy of violating the 1990 Conservation Law by killing protected animals.

“ProFauna Indonesia hopes that the West Java Police will take action against hunters who kill protected wildlife,” Radius Nursidi, the coordinator of the West Java chapter of ProFauna, said after filing the report to police in Bandung.

Rosek added that ProFauna would monitor the police’s handling of the case closely.

Anger over photos of Indonesian cattle cruelty

Photo: Workers unload cattle by using ropes hanging around their necks in Surabaya, East Java. (AFP: Juni Kriswanto)

Animal rights activists have denounced the “cruel” treatment of cattle in Indonesia after pictures emerged of cows being lifted by a crane from ropes tied to their heads.

It is another blow to the country’s reputation for dealing with livestock following international criticism in 2011 when theABC’s Four Corners program aired footage of Indonesian abattoir workers torturing cows shipped from Australia.

The scandal prompted the Government to suspend live exports to Indonesia for a month.

In the latest pictures, taken by an AFP photographer, a crane is shown transferring three bony cows from a boat in the eastern Javanese city of Surabaya using a loop of rope around their skulls.

Another photograph shows seven live cows being lifted in a similar fashion in one group, with their necks outstretched.

The boat transporting the cattle had come from Sumbawa island, around 500 kilometres east of Surabaya, but it is not clear whether that is where the cattle were reared.

The cattle were to be transported to the capital Jakarta, according to a worker in the operation who declined to give his name.

It is not known which company was transporting the cattle.

While a large number of cattle are transported around Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, it is not normal practice to lift animals up by their heads.

Indonesian Veterinary Association chairwoman Wiwiek Bagja said animal welfare laws in effect since 2009 did not work because they do not actually lay out what punishments people should face for animal cruelty.

“In short, Indonesia is very far from implementing and enforcing the law,” she said.

Activist stage demonstration against exotic animal meat trade

Activists protested in Puputan, Denpasar yesterday afternoon to bring attention to the illicit trade of Indonesia’s rare animals for use in exotic foods.

The organizers of the protest have been identified as ProFauna, an environmental group that seeks to “protect Indonesian animals and their habitats” according to their website.

A number of protesters were seen carrying signs and banners that criticized the current trade of wild animals.

ProFauna Bali coordinator, Jatmiko Wiwoho, explained the results of investigations and research conducted by the group suggest that the consumption of rare wild animals in restaurants is truly alarming. According to Wiwoho, there are seven major cities that consume exotic meats including Denpasar, Surabaya, Malang, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Palembang and Medan.

The wild animals consumed include monkeys, anteaters, turtles, monkeys, snakes, lizards, and porcupine, oftentimes to satisfy local superstitions that say they cure diseases according to Wiwoho.

He said if current trends continue, many of Indonesia’s rare and unique animals may become extinct.

The group organizer highlighted the plight of the Mangrove Monitor Lizard which is endemic to Bali and Java. He said that at least 100 animals are poached a month to meet demand for its meat in markets and restaurants around Bali.

Whole species disappear from the wild as millions of animals are illegally exported round the world in a business with profit margins that rival the drugs trade

David Adam, environment correspondent

The Observer, Sunday 21 February 2010

Countries across south-east Asia are being systematically drained of wildlife to meet a booming demand for exotic pets in Europe and Japan and traditional medicine in China – posing a greater threat to many species than habitat loss or global warming.

More than 35 million animals were legally exported from the region over the past decade, official figures show, and hundreds of millions more could have been taken illegally. Almost half of those traded were seahorses and more than 17 million were reptiles. About 1 million birds and 400,000 mammals were traded, along with 18 million pieces of coral.

Illegal trade has made the pangolin rare in south-east Asia so now Africa is being targeted. Photograph: HOW HWEE YOUNG/EPA

The situation is so serious that experts have invented a new term – empty forest syndrome – to describe the gaping holes in biodiversity left behind.

“There’s lots of forest where there are just no big animals left,” says Chris Shepherd of Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network. “There are some forests where you don’t even hear birds.”

Seahorses, butterflies, turtles, lizards, snakes, macaques, birds and corals are among the most common species exported from countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. Much of the business is controlled by criminal gangs, Shepherd says, and many of the animals end up in Europe as pets. The rarer the species, the greater the demand and the higher the price. Collectors will happily pay several thousand pounds for a single live turtle.

Vincent Nijman, a researcher at Oxford Brookes University who has investigated the trade, said: “We see species that are in fashion traded in great numbers until they are wiped out and people can’t get them any more. So another one comes in, and then that is wiped out, and then another comes in.”

He added: “In Asia, everybody knows the value of wildlife, so people go into the forest and, whatever they encounter, they know it has a value and that there is someone they can sell it to.”

Nijman’s research offers the first glimpse of the size of this widespread trade. While most people are aware of illegal sales of rhino horn and ivory, he says it is the scale of the movement of lesser-known species that is most disturbing.

He analysed 53,000 records of imports and exports from countries under Cites, the international convention that regulates the sale of wildlife. Most common species are not listed under Cites, so do not appear in the records. Trade in the most endangered, such as rhino and tiger, is banned. Nijman looked at species considered vulnerable enough that trade is allowed, but controlled. “I’m not against the wildlife trade at all. I think it is a very important economic driver for a large part of the region and a lot of people are dependent on it,” he said. “But it has to be done in such a way that you don’t finish it all this year. It’s not like oil, where you drill it out and then it’s gone. If you organise and regulate it properly, it should go on for ever.”

Cites records between 1998 and 2007 showed that of more than 35 million animals exported during that period, some 30 million were taken from the wild. The EU and Japan were among the most significant importers.

For some mammal species, the proportion sourced from the wild dropped significantly over the decade, and traders were forced to rely increasingly on captive-bred animals. Official trade in birds virtually disappeared by 2007, probably because of bird flu restrictions.

The bulk of seahorses traded were in the form of dried specimens for Chinese medicine. “The moment you look into the wildlife trade in south-east Asia, China is the biggest challenge, because they can use everything and they will use everything.”

Trade in the Asian pangolin, a scaly anteater, illustrates the problem. Officially, countries do not allow their commercial sale and agreed a zero quota under Cites in 2000, though regular seizures show widespread trade, for medicine and meat. “The countries closest to China get emptied [of pangolin] first. Vietnam and Laos have been drained. Myanmar has been drained and they are working south, so now Indonesia is being emptied of pangolins,” Shepherd says. “Prices are very high and in the next few years we will see pangolins being sucked out of Africa to supply the demand.”

Nijman says his analysis of the Cites records, published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation, inevitably underestimates the scale of the trade. “There is always an unknown quantity of Cites-listed species that are traded without being reported, and on top of that, probably much larger, is the trade in non-Cites species, which are the species that we think are still common enough to be traded without controls.”

One of these is the tokay gecko. “Every­one who has been to Indonesia or Malaysia will know them because they are the ones that sit in your hotel room. You have them everywhere.” Although not listed by Cites, Indonesia has set a limit of 45,000 of the lizards exported each year as pets. Nijman says the true number traded is much higher, perhaps into the millions. “We can’t say whether a million tokay geckos being traded a year, or two million, is too many. Perhaps there are so many it is OK. But you would think that if they set the quota at 45,000 then a million is too much.”

Such geckos can be typically bought in rural villages for a few cents each, and sold for $10 – a profit margin that rivals the drugs trade. “It’s a great business. No wonder organised crime gets involved and starts running things,” Shepherd says. “In Malaysia if you get caught selling drugs you get the death penalty. For wildlife crime the maximum fine is about $5,000.”

The situation is acute in south-east Asia, but the trade, both legal and illegal, is global, often using the internet and courier delivery. For $4,000, an illegal trader based in Indonesia will send a three-year-old ploughshare tortoise from Madagascar, one of the most endangered animals in the world.

Other species sell for as much as $20,000, though Nijman and Shepherd do not want to advertise which ones. “People do know about the rhinos and the tigers, but the vast majority of this trade is in stuff that they didn’t know existed,” said Shepherd. “A handful of people are getting very rich and most people are getting screwed out of their natural resources.”

THE WILDLIFE MARKET

130,000 butterflies, mostly from Malaysia to US, EU and Canada (such as the Birdwing) 16 million seahorses, mostly from Thailand to Hong Kong, Taiwan and China 73,000 exotic fish, mostly from Malaysia and Indonesia to Hong Kong (such as the Napoleon Wrasse) 17 million reptiles, mostly from Indonesia and Malaysia, to Singapore, EU and Japan; includes 1.3 million softshell turtles, 1.8 million cobras, 8.1 million monitor lizards, 400,000 crocodiles 400,000 mammals, mostly from China and Malaysia to the EU and Singapore; includes 270,000 macaques, 91,000 leopard cats 1 million birds, mainly from China, Vietnam and Malaysia, to the EU, Japan and Malaysia (such as leiothrix babblers) 18 million pieces of coral and 2,000 tonnes of live coral, mainly from Indonesia to the US and EU * CITES TRADE DATA 1998-2007, INCLUDING THOSE WILD AND CAPTIVE-BRED

Suspect arrested in Jakarta after investigation of internet ads for endangered wildlife

February 2011: A suspect found with hundreds of illegal wildlife items, including elephant ivory, sun bear parts and tiger bones, had been arrested after a successful raid in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The suspect was trading from an art shop and using the internet to advertise illegal wildlife parts to domestic and foreign buyers. Parts appear to have been sourced from across Indonesia and were being shipped using courier services.

The raid took place earlier this month was conducted by the Indonesian Police and Indonesian Department of Forestry, Directorate-General for Forest Protection and Nature Conservation (PHKA), working in conjunction with WCS’s Wildlife Crime Unit and local partners.

The start of a major crackdownThe suspect was identified following an investigation of internet advertisements for protected wildlife originating in Indonesia conducted by WCS and partners in collaboration with the Indonesian Department of Forestry and Police. The investigation and subsequent arrest represents the start of a crackdown by the authorities.

The internet is a growing medium for the sale of illegal wildlife parts and is proliferating in Indonesia, which now has more than 30 million internet users and has the world’s second largest Facebook following.

‘If you are trying to sell wildlife online, beware. We will catch you and you will be prosecuted. We are currently investigating a number of cases, and this arrest represents just the first,’ said Pak Darori, Director General of Forest Protection and Nature Conservation at the Ministry of Forestry.

‘Cyber space is no hiding place’‘The Indonesian Government is committed to stopping illegal wildlife trade wherever it occurs and strengthening its commitments to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The increase in internet advertisements is worrying, but this arrest shows that cyber space is no hiding place.’

Noviar Andayani, Director of the WCS Indonesia Programme, said: ‘The illegal wildlife trade is a massive threat in Indonesia – not only to iconic animals like the tiger, elephant, and sun bear, but to many protected species of animals and plants. We commend the work of the Indonesian police and Forestry Department for their commitment to uphold and enforce the law, and to track down and arrest suspects wherever they are operating: be it in a village, a market, or online.’

Joe Walston, Director of WCS’s Asia Programs, said: ‘This recent raid shows the importance of working closely with law enforcement as a key component in the fight against illegal wildlife trade. If governments want to protect their wildlife resources, they need to be serious about enforcement. Clearly Indonesia is taking a lead on this front.’

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program (SOCP) announced today Sumatra’s first ever successful sentence of an illegal orangutan owner and trader in Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia.

The seven-month prison sentence is only the third for Indonesia, despite orangutans being strictly protected under Indonesian law since 1924.

Although there have been over 2,500 confiscations of illegally held orangutans in Indonesia since the early 1970′s, the first actual prosecution of an illegal orangutan owner occurred in Borneo in 2010, and now in Sumatra with this case in 2012.

The case began with the confiscation of a young male orangutan named Julius last July in Mardinding, Karo District, in the province of North Sumatra. The owner was allegedly trying to sell the orangutan, which was believed to be three years old.

The raid was conducted by the Indonesian Ministry of Forestry’s Directorate-General for Forest Protection and Nature Conservation (PHKA), working in conjunction with WCS’s Wildlife Crime Unit and the veterinarian and staff of the SOCP.

The Wildlife Crime Unit, created by WCS in 2003 and funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other donors, provides data and technical advice to law enforcement agencies to support the investigation and prosecution of wildlife crimes.

The SOCP, implemented by the Swiss-based PanEco Foundation, and the Indonesian NGO YEL (Foundation for a Sustainable Ecosystem) have operated the only orangutan rescue center in Sumatra since 2001 and have so far reintroduced over 150 confiscated ex-pet orangutans back to the wild. Julius is now being cared for at the SOCP’s orangutan quarantine center near Medan, with just over 50 other orangutans also being prepared for a return to the forest.

After spending 30 days in quarantine, Julius is now living in a socialization cage, which allows him to adapt to the presence of other orangutans. Though the road to full rehabilitation might still be a long one, Julius is making excellent progress and is expected to be released back into the wild in the future.

The sentence reflects an increase in activity and action to combat the illegal wildlife trade in Indonesia in recent years. In the last two years there have been more than 20 arrests for illegally possessing or trading protected wildlife, including the critically endangered Sumatran tiger and pangolin.

The prosecution is in full compliance with the Indonesian Government’s own National Orangutan Conservation Strategy and Action plan, launched in 2007.

The majority of illegal pet orangutans are a byproduct of forest clearance for palm oil plantations and of conflicts between farmers and orangutans that raid crops in converted agricultural areas. In most cases, they are not hunted specifically for food or trade in Sumatra, but are more “refugees” from forests that no longer exist.

Conservationists believe Julius’s mother was killed at the time of his capture. Relatively few orangutans are actively traded in Sumatra, but the SOCP and PHKA still confiscate around 30 illegal pets each year, whose mothers have been killed.

The Head of Natural Resources Conservancy Agency (BBKSDA) North Sumatra, Arief Tongkagie, said: “Based on the successful completion of this case, our hope is that in the future more people will be willing to report crimes against orangutans”.

According to Panut, Chairman of the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Forum (FOKUS): “Increased efforts to curb crimes against orangutans will provide a deterrent effect to traders.”

The Wildlife Conservation Society is actively trying to reduce the damaging impact of the illegal wildlife trade.

“We commend Indonesia’s Ministry of Forestry’s Directorate-General for Forest Protection and Nature Conservation (PHKA) for taking a hard stance on wildlife trade, which is threatening to destroy the country’s natural resources,” said Dr Noviar Andayani, Director of the WCS Indonesia Program. “We are hopeful that this prosecution sends a clear message that illegal wildlife trade will not be tolerated in Indonesia.”

“Working closely with law enforcement is a key component in the fight against illegal wildlife trade,” said Joe Walston, WCS Executive Director for Asia programs. “If governments want to protect their wildlife resources, they need to be serious about enforcement. Clearly Indonesia is taking a lead on this front.”

Ian Singleton, Director of Conservation for the PanEco Foundation and the person in charge of the SOCP, said: “It’s absolutely fantastic to finally have a prosecution of an illegal orangutan ‘owner’ in Sumatra, but it’s also long overdue. With this sentence, as long as it is widely publicized in the region, anyone considering capturing, killing or keeping an orangutan illegally will certainly think twice about it, and hopefully the numbers being killed and kept in the coming years will begin to decline.”

Support for the Wildlife Crimes Unit comes from the Great Ape Conservation Fund, administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The program has seen a dip in funding in recent years; Congress is currently considering funding levels for the Great Ape Conservation Fund and other related species accounts for the Fiscal Year 2013 and WCS backs full and robust support for these investments.

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Image Caption: This is “Julius,” a baby orangutan saved from an illegal trader in North Sumatra, Indonesia. He is expected to be released back into the wild in the near future. Credit: WCS

Traditional funeral ceremony

The video speaks for itself. It occurred on the island of Sumba in Eastern Indonesia which has numerous other equally barbaric religious sacrifice traditions and events.

Religious animal sacrifice is not yet banned throughout Indonesia and many different religions and belief systems still exist where the participants believe that violence towards animals will make gods and spirits happy with them.

The animals are killed in a variety of cruel and brutal ways which include stabbing them to death, slowly slitting shallow cuts to the throat, beheading, being torn apart alive by frenzied mobs, having their throat slit and head slowly torn off, burning alive, suffocation, live skinning, and removal of hearts whilst fully conscious. Body parts such as limbs are often also removed whilst the animals are still alive and fully conscious. They are normally beaten and roughly handled by impatient “priests” and bound in painful ways before the actual sacrifice.

Transport to the sacrifice is also horrendous and can involve tying and suspending large animals such as bovines by their feet from the roof of vehicles. Many animals are injured or die during the transport. Despite this outrageous abuse and blatant cruelty the Indonesian government subsidises and funds many of the sacrifices and events.

Children are taken to these events and subjected to terrifying scenes of violence and abuse.They are visibly frightened and traumatised by what they see. Being exposed to such violence at such a young age can cause mental instability and pathological conditions and disorders.

Animal sacrifice is abhorrent, barbaric, pointless and cruel and we call on the government of Indonesia to ban all animal sacrifice, of all species of animal and involving all religious beliefs and traditions.

It is 2011 and there is no place in the modern world for such vicious and mindless cruelty.

The petition

Please help to put an end to animal sacrifice in Indonesia and add your voice to the PETITION urging the Indonesian Government to ban all animal sacrifice.

Javanese tiger believed still in existence

The Javanese tiger (Panthera tigris sondaica) may have been declared to extinct by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1994, but recently clues discovered by a researcher are believed to be evidence of the tiger’s existence, especially in the forests of Central Java’s Muria mountain range.

Covering an area of nearly 70,000 hectares, the mountain range encompasses the three neighboring regencies of Jepara, Kudus and Pati.

A biologist at Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Didik said that his belief was based on his 14 years of research and efforts to look for evidence of the Javanese tiger in the area.

The latest evidence, he said, was a 5×6 centimeter piece of skin he believed to have come from a Javanese tiger.

He said he had obtained the piece from Muali, a staffer at the Pati Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA).

Muali, who is also the head of the Clereng Natural Preserve Resort, said he got the skin from a trader of antique goods at a traditional market in Kudus. The trader bought the skin from a hunter who was said to have killed the animal in the Muria mountain range’s Rahtawu subdistrict in 2008.

Yet, he said, further examination was needed to make sure the skin was really that of a Javanese tiger and not of a Sumatran tiger, which had had similar stripes.

“That is why I handed over the skin to Didik for further testing,” said Muali, adding that locals had often reported that they sighted Javanese tigers in the mountain range area.

Didik, who was 90 percent sure that the sample had come from a Javanese tiger, said that in 2000, a Javanese tiger was found dead in Colo, Kudus, after eating a goat carcass that had been poisoned by an employee of the local tourism agency.

Didik also said he found traces of the carnivore in the mountain range in 1998.

Didik said that based on testimony by locals, there might be a change in the physical appearance of the Javanese tiger found in Muria mountain range.

Scientific notes describe Javanese tigers as bigger than Sumatran tigers (Panthera tigris sumatrae), but locals who claimed to have spotted the animal in the Muria area said that it was small but had big feet.

“This could be the result of long-distance walks, because of the hilly habitat,” Didik said.

He said the Javanese tigers had originally lived in lowland habitats, but that the conversion of these areas had pushed the tigers into mountainous areas.

Based on his research, Didik said that the Muria mountain range was not the only site where traces of Javanese tigers were found. He said he previously found evidence that the animals also live in the Meru Betiri and Gunung Raung National Parks in East Java.

Different evidence was also reported by activists at the Muria Research Center, an environmental NGO.

“We found the feces of a Javanese tiger while hiking in the Muria range from July to August 2011, when we were heading to the Termulus Peak to be precise,” activist Imam Khanafi said.

Panthera tigris sondaica

• Inhabited the Indonesian island of Java

• Small compared to other subspecies of the Asian mainland, but larger in size than Bali tigers

• Males weighed between 100 and 140 kg with a body length of 200 to 245 cm

• Females were smaller than males and weighed between 75 and 115 kg on average

• Their nose was long and narrow, occipital plane remarkably narrow and carnassials relatively long.

• Had long and thin stripes, which were slightly more numerous than the Sumatran tiger